Our Sexy Virgin Mary

Fashion designer, Ricardo Oyarzun has some Catholic groups’ panties in a bunch. Is he an ignorant scoundrel or just a financially savvy one?

Oyarzun, most notable for his lack of notability in the fashion world, is sitting in the center of a cash-making storm of religious outrage at his recent designs. Ricardo has done the unspeakable. He has aimed the ‘everyone’s sexy’ lens of fashion at the Virgin Mary by dressing some of his models in like fashion, heavy cleavage and all.

While the designs may be no better than the art direction of your average advertisement for a men’s shaving emollient, Oyarzun apparently knows one thing well: How to incur the wrath of just the right people to make a shipload of controversy-money.

Madonna did it before him. Caravaggio and Michelangelo probably even got some flack-cash in their day. Playboy of Mexico just stepped in it, as well.

To whit, Oyarzun’s stunt is the sort of thing the mediocre in their fields stoop to when they’ve run out of more honorable attention, like making a really smart pair of knickers. The list of people who have used this to their own ends is exhaustingly long. Recent examples are also aplenty. Photographer Hans van Manen gave it his homo-erotic spin in 1994 and even Mel [I’m a REAL Catholic] Gibson had his take on the Virgin Mary in film.

To say nothing of Scorsese.

Hey, you can’t please all of the Christians all of the time. They won’t let you. But they will drive a controversy straight to the bank for you. No one knows this better than Mel, who made her Blueness a slight bit more attractive than some of our Catholic Alter Boy loins would feel comfy gazing upon.

It’s like imagining doing it with your mother. A curiosity, but ultimately a nauseating one.

My childhood priest, Father Ludwig, would have blanched, while laughing uncomfortably. “But she’s the Virgin Mary,” he’d likely say over this whole flap. “For Christ’s sake, the guilt!”

Titillating as her big-bosomed image might be to the current-day, hetero maleness in some of us, this sort of thing has evolutionary roots, as well. As far back as caveman days the Homo Erectus has been getting his sex mixed in with his religion. Check out those fertility goddess statues and priapus-filled cave-paintings.

Oldest profession aside, how many penises and breasts does one need to see painted on prehistoric cave walls before we realize we’re all sexual beings, always have been, and just get over it? Goodness knows, we could benefit by relaxing on the whole matter of sex. Maybe then we could resist being led about so easily by our crotches and let Oyarzun’s cry for help go by our consciousnesses as the piffle it is.

While Chile threw court cases at him (and flaming poo in a bag), American religious groups will likely hurl warm, wet wads of shame. Letters, articles, petitions to boycott… Oh, dear me.

Personally, I blame this noses-high, American up-tightness on the Puritans. Too much emphasis on work over enjoyment. Hundreds of years later, I think we’re still trying to shake that whole pasty period off of us.

But I digress. The point of the matter is this: Who’s to say if the Virgin Mary a sexual being or not? And furthermore, should any of us be getting our dander up when she is so depicted? Shouldn’t we just let it go and concede the point that she DID provide other siblings for Jesus, as the manuscripts bear out? Don’t we have bigger problems in the world, right now, than to even give this crap a second glance?

Yea, things will ultimately die down for Ricardo. Only to perhaps ignite in another country as his news-magnet fashion show makes the rounds... But ultimately, the whole bloody exercise will have put him exactly where every egotistical creative sort preceding him wanted to be:

In the center of things, having his ‘eccentric’ decisions questioned.

And profiting by the truck-full.

NOTE: As a result of this blip of a story, I’ve just been scouring the internet for ‘sexy pix of Jesus Christ’. Apparently the sexy apple doesn’t fall far from the Dogwood tree. Jesus, in all his past and current portraiture, sure looks like a lady-killer to me.

I think he lifts weights, these days, though.

SOURCE: Reuters